What Does it Mean to Question?

The purpose of this paper is two fold: first, to tease out the meaning inherent in the correlativity of the question and answer process and second, to suggest a philosophical answer to the question “What does it mean to question?” in the context of teacher education. To that end, we want to claim that R.G. Collingwood’s “Logic of Question and Answer” is a valuable tool in filling the gap in scholarship concerning the art of questioning. While research into the activity of teaching often emphasizes the role and effectiveness of questioning, these studies have largely focussed on the strategies and results of the practice of questioning. We argue that they place too little emphasis on making sense of the process itself and that more time should be spent on the Logic of Question and Answer. To accomplish our goal, in Collingwoodian form, we will contextualize an example of how the understanding of the question and answer complex informs the practice of teacher education in the specific area of the Social Studies Methods Course.     

Faculty members’ perceptions of online program community and their efforts to sustain it

This study investigated faculty members’ perceptions of program community and what they do to support it in online graduate programs. Researchers developed and administered an online survey to ascertain perceptions of program community among education and engineering faculty members at United States, land-grant, research-extensive universities. Three hundred forty-four faculty members responded. Most participants thought that fostering community beyond courses was important. Faculty members used a variety of strategies to accomplish this task, including social media, synchronous communication and advising, face-to-face socials and orientations, and cohort models. Yet, many also relied on classroom strategies. Several participants indicated that they and their students lacked the time, resources or interest to pursue program community and that geographical distance and university reward policies complicated its establishment. Differences via discipline, gender and years of online teaching experience were also reported.     

TECH PREP AT THE CROSSROADS

A decade has passed since the publication of Parnell's (1985) book The Neglected Majority, which stressed the need to provide a linkage system to better articulate secondary and postsecondary technical education. Initial strides in generating the “tech prep system” have begun to slow down. The slackened pace has resulted from, among other factors, a failure to adequately define the system that constitutes tech prep. This article discusses 11 problems that have proved to be obstacles in moving tech prep forward. The article also offers a model that can be construed as a tech prep product that can be marketed much as a college transfer program is marketed. The product, however, is actually an array of products constituting a system, the contents of which vary from place to place. The model is divided into both secondary and postsecondary components, and each set of components is explained. The secondary component is further explained in terms of a core component and a suggested component. The article also includes a discussion of how the model addresses the problems set out previously. The article concludes with sections on the model components of a tech prep system and the implications for practice that result from the discussion.     

How much of a difference do principals make? An analysis of between-schools variation in academic achievement in Hong Kong public secondary schools

This article aims to explain the role principals play in the variation in academic achievement between secondary schools in Hong Kong. The article draws on survey data from 179 key staff and 2,037 students from 42 schools. The study uses 2 analytical approaches. First, it employs classification and regression tree analysis (CART). This was used to sort out the most significant leadership practices associated with student achievement. Second, based on first-stage analysis, the study further explores the effects of leadership practices on academic achievement using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM). Results indicate that transparent and efficient communication structures as managed by principals explained approximately 12% of between-schools variation in academic achievement. Leadership practices related to quality assurance and accountability and resource management also contributed to explaining between-schools variation in academic achievement, yet they had negative effects on student achievement. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A survey on evaluation practices in teaching and learning centres

There is general consensus that teaching and learning centres have a positive impact on promoting and supporting a culture that values teaching and learning, yet there is limited evidence on how centres evaluate their work. For this purpose, a survey was developed and administered to the directors of 88 Canadian centres; 46 of which completed the survey. In this paper, we share centres’ approaches to evaluation that emerged from the survey findings and the artifact analysis. By raising awareness of evaluation approaches, we are better positioned to identify further opportunities to develop a more systematic and coherent approach to evaluation.     

Children's Proportional Judgments: The Importance of "Half"

3 experiments are reported, all of which show the crucial importance of the "half" boundary in children's proportional judgments. In the first experiment 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children had to judge which of 2 boxes of blue and white bricks was represented in a small picture. The proportion of blue to white bricks was different in the 2 boxes, and the question was whether the children could use these proportions to make their choices. The 6- and 7-year-old children solved the problem much more successfully when the proportions crossed the "half" boundary (e.g., 3/8 blue vs. 5/8 blue). The second experiment showed that discriminations involving half (e.g., 1/2 blue vs. 1/4 blue) are also easier than those that do not cross the "half" boundary for the 6- and 7-year-olds. The third experiment confirmed the results of the first 2 with pictures of different absolute sizes from each other. We conclude that "half" plays a crucial role in children's early proportional reasoning, and that the "half" boundary is to some extent similar to, though not as powerful as, the category boundaries discovered in speech perception.     

RATIONAL NUMBER AND PROPORTIONAL REASONING: USING INTENSIVE QUANTITIES TO PROMOTE ACHIEVEMENT IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE

Student mastery of rational number and proportional reasoning is a recognized challenge, yet supporting mastery is central within mathematics and science. This paper focuses on a 4-lesson teaching programme which was designed to foster mastery in the context of intensive quantities. Intensive quantities such as density, speed and temperature depend upon proportional relations, require rational number for their representation and are relevant to science. Two versions of the teaching programme were developed, one using ratio representation and the other using fractions. Implementation with 535 children aged 9–11 years revealed that both versions promoted mastery of fractions, whilst the ratio version also supported proportional reasoning. It is suggested that the ratio version provides useful foundations for teaching, even with children who, as with the present sample, have no previous experience of ratios themselves.     

Adolescents’ developing awareness of inequality: Racial and ethnic differences in trajectories

To advance knowledge of critical consciousness development, this study examined age-related change in awareness of inequality by race and ethnicity, gender, parent education, generation status, and their interactions. With longitudinal data (2013–2017) from 5019 adolescents in grades 6–12 (55.0% female) from California, Minnesota, and West Virginia, multigroup second-order latent growth curves were estimated for Black (13.7%), Latinx (37.0%), Asian (8.1%), and white (41.3%) youth. Black, Latinx, and Asian adolescents increased awareness of inequality longitudinally; white youth showed no change. Multiracial youth accelerated awareness of inequality in mid-adolescence; changes in race and ethnicity predicted decline, followed by increases. Girls with more educated, immigrant-origin parents started out more aware of inequality. Results signal the need for race-specific and intersectional approaches to studying critical consciousness development.